Building a Musical Library

General Books About Music

-- The Remarkable Farkle McBride, John Lithgow

-- I Know a Shy Fellow Who Swallowed a Cello, Barbara S. Garriel

-- Do Re Mi: If You Can Read Music, Thank Guido D'Arezzo, Susan Roth

--The Story of the Orchestra, Robert Levine

-- Mole Music, David McPhail

-- Can You Hear It?, William Lach

-- A Young Person's Guide to Music, Neil Ardley

-- Meet the Orchestra, Ann Hayes

-- Zin! Zin! Zin! a Violin, Lloyd Moss

-- The Jazz Fly, Matthew Gollub

-- The Philharmonic Gets Dressed, Karla Kuskin

-- Two Scarlet Songbirds: a story of Anton Dvorjak, Carole Lexa Schaeffer

-- M is for Melody, a musical alphabet, Kathy-Jo Wargin and Katherine Larson

Start looking out for these books at Goodwill, used book sales, Amazon lists, etc. Just start building your own musical library, so these books are always available for your children to pick up and read on their own, or for you to read to them before bed, or just anytime.

Books About Orchestral Works:

(this series is pretty much a must-have, in my mind)-- all by Anna Harwell Celenza

I've arranged them in chronological order with a note as to which "time period" they fall into, and it might be helpful to have a timeline on your school wall somewhere, where you can write in each piece of music as you hear it.

-- Bach's Goldberg Variations (Bach, Baroque)

-- The Farewell Symphony (Haydn, Classical)

-- The Heroic Symphony (Beethoven, first "Romantic" work)

-- Pictures at an Exhibition (Mussorgsky, Romantic)

-- Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue (Gershwin, Modern- Jazz)